Microsoft's Bing Video Feature Poses Security Challenges

Microsoft's new Bing search engine touts cool video features, a sleek streamlined interface, and stronger, more refined search results.

But Bing has one problem, security experts say, which distinguishes it from its biggest search engine competitor, Google. Microsoft's Bing can enable children or employees to view porn and inappropriate videos without ever having to leave the search engine site.

Using Bing, pornographic sites could be included in the listed keyword search results along with related thumbnail videos, which users can view as they're scrolling for a desired site. The thumbnails play around 30 seconds of video footage when users hover a mouse over them.

The feature could potentially allow children and employees to watch pornographic videos without visiting a pornographic Web site. Meanwhile the feature makes it more difficult for pornography viewing to be addressed by parents or employers, due to the fact that users are never transported out of Bing, experts say.

Security experts say that while the upgraded video feature is attractive, the challenges represent a "subtle but huge difference" between Bing and other search engines.

"You're presumably on a search site. You could be presented with 20 or 30 thumbnail images that the video plays right into the browser. Employees or kids could be accessing that content without ever going to the host URL," said Bob Kessinger, vice president of security company CyberPatrol. "It really presents a problem when you have inappropriate material."

In addition, Bing's age verification tool, ostensibly to inhibit underage users from accessing inappropriate sites, is easily bypassed by youngsters and irrelevant for employees in a work environment.

"That doesn't work in a work setting either. Everybody presumably is over 18. You still don't want your employees to go there," Kessinger said.

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